Exciting news! – setting dependencies between plan items just got easier with dependency chaining. In addition to this Release 31 update, we’ve expanded upon filtering options with the new ASAP task filter. Visibility is also increased in portfolio, package, and project views by surfacing inherited custom data values and target dates in columns. Other updates include showing scheduled hours in workload view, changes to access roles, and consolidating the actions available when using the right-click/3-dot menu.

Dependency Chains

Easily visualize the sequence of phases and skip going to the edit panel with dependency chaining. Set dependencies directly from portfolio, package, project, and grid views. 

NEW: Quickly create relationships between tasks and containers by selecting multiple items and using the right-click/3-dot menu. After opening the menu, click “Create Dependencies” to chain the items together in top-down order. 

ASAP Task Filtering

NEW: See which tasks have an elevated priority in the workspace with the new ASAP task filter. This filter option is available in the following areas within the task status filter menu: 

• Widgets in Dashboards
• Board View
• Project View
• Timesheet Export

Learn more about ASAP scheduling here: ASAP TASK SCHEDULING.

Custom Field Inheritance

NEW: Custom field values set on a parent package, project, or subfolder can now be inherited by the sub-items within the higher-level container. To set inheritance on custom fields, go to Administration in the left-side navigation and select the Custom Data tile.

Increased Visibility

Custom Data Fields: View item metrics alongside custom data in portfolio, project, and grid views, as well as in the timesheet export. Following recent work on custom field inheritance, inherited custom data values appear grayed out in columns. 

Target Dates: Inherited target start and finish dates are surfaced in columns when in portfolio, package, project, and grid views. Inherited target dates appear in gray.

Workload View: Get insight into a member’s workload at a glance. In workload view, hover over a workload bar to see the number of hours scheduled for a specific task on that day.

Access Controls

CHANGED: In the time tracking modal, the user interface has been updated in Release 31 to more clearly reflect read-only access for project observers. 

FIXED: Workspace members with project editor access were previously unable to open links saved on a container’s custom field. This was brought to our attention by one of our users – thank you!

Right-Click/3-Dot Menu

CHANGED: When multiple items are selected in portfolio, package, and project views, the right-click and 3-dot menu adjusts to only show actions that can be applied to multiple items. 

The post New Updates | Release 31 Summary appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

New! Scheduling Limits

Use Scheduling Limits to control how much time your team dedicates to their projects and tasks on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Limits can be set for Members and Resources on Packages, Projects, Sub-Folders and Tasks.

When limits are in place, work schedules in parallel rather than following a typical waterfall pattern. For example, let’s say you have two projects; ordinarily you’d finish everything assigned to you in the first project before starting on tasks in the second project (that’s the waterfall pattern). Now, if each project has a 4 hour daily limit, four hours worth of task assignments will be scheduled for you in the first project and then four hours for the second project, every day, until all the tasks are marked done.

This feature is extremely flexible, allowing multiple limits on plan items and combining limit types. Enter any limit you need from a minimum of 15 minutes to a maximum of 744 hours (roughly the number of hours in a month). Use decimals to enter partial hours: .25, .5, .75. The default limit is a 4 hour daily limit.

To set Scheduling Limits, go to the plan item Edit Panel.

Package, Project, Sub-Folder limits are set on the Planning tab.
Task limits are set on the Assignments tab, scroll down past the Assignments table.

Learn more about Scheduling Limits in the Academy.

The post Release 30 | Scheduling Limits appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

We’re very excited to announce the release of Scheduling Limits – one of the most requested features for the New LiquidPlanner. In addition to this update we also upgraded bulk editing capabilities, improved Target Finish deadline visibility in Workload views and added an Availability Summary under People. This new view makes it easy to see the daily availability of team members as well as who’s in and who’s out over the next sixty days.

Scheduling Limits

NEW: Set daily, weekly and monthly Scheduling Limits for your work in Packages, Projects, Sub-Folders and Tasks. Read more about Scheduling Limits.

Package & Project Workload Views

NEW: Target Finish Indicator appears at the top of Package and Project Workload views when a Target Finish deadline is in place at the Package or Project level. A checkered flag marks the Target Finish date. A gray bar spans across days prior to the Target Finish and red spans the days after that date.

Bulk Editor in Portfolio, Package, Project and Grid Views

Checking the box next to a plan item name engages the Bulk Editor, a tool for editing, moving, deleting and updating information on multiple plan items at once. In this release the Bulk Editor has received some powerful upgrades. It now supports click and drag auto-fill to copy and paste content down a column and complex editing for custom fields with multiple values.

NEW: Clicking into a cell and dragging the blue handle down applies the same content to each row.

NEW: Edit and Swap Assignments buttons each have a 50 item editing limit. These buttons are disabled when more than 50 items are selected. Hover text reminds you to select fewer items.

NEW: Multi Picklist and Multi User data fields are now supported in the Bulk Editor for Organizations on the PROFESSIONAL and ULTIMATE Plans.

Availability

Availability is integral to Predictive Scheduling and maintaining a Balanced Workload. In order to set realistic expectations about when work can be done, you need to exclude hours you’re not available for project work and have the flexibility to extend hours when needed. Availability uses Working Times to reflect your availability and Time-Off to ensure work doesn’t schedule when you’re not available to do it.

NEW: Availability has been added to People. There are two sub-views, Summary and Everyone Time Off. These views provide quick access to Member and Resource availability across your entire workspace in one convenient location.

Summary displays Member and Resource availability over the next 60 days. Working Time indicators are blue and Time Off indicators are gray. Hover over the indicators to see the date and hours available per day.

Everyone Time Off displays holidays and other scheduled activities that take people away from project work for a full day or more. Everyone Time Off blocks scheduling for everyone in the workspace. This view is also surfaced in each member’s Availability View.

FIXED: We fixed a bug in the availability rules processing. If a person or resource had multiple overlapping rules, those rules may have combined in the wrong order yielding more or less availability on days of overlap.

App Wide Changes

COLOR CHANGE: Lemon Twist has been replaced by Gold Metal everywhere color can be customized: Avatars, Dashboards, Task Status, Packages, Projects, Sub-Folders, Custom Data Fields. In Data Fields we treat the color change like archiving a value. Lemon Twist remains in place anywhere it was set, but it can’t be selected when creating new data fields or values.

ICON CHANGE: Drag bars are replaced by Six-Dot grab handles throughout the application. Use the Six-Dot to prioritize Packages, Projects, Tasks and Assignments, change the Widget order in Dashboard Settings, change list order for Custom Status and Data Fields in Administration.

Timesheet Review

CHANGED: Timesheet Reviewers see timesheets by the Member’s week rather than their own. This means that if the Timesheet Reviewer’s week runs Sunday to Saturday and the week for the Member being reviewed runs Monday to Sunday, the Reviewer will see Monday to Sunday in Timesheet Review.

Member Workload & Board Views

REMOVED: The button to select the number of items shown on a Member’s Workload and Board views has been removed. The views now have a default setting allowing the display of up to 100 Tasks.

The post New Updates | Release 30 Summary appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

Single Sign-On (SSO) was added in Release 29.

We now support Single Sign-On! Organizations on the Ultimate Plan can enable SSO under Administration in the left-side navigation. SSO is also included in the Ultimate trial and Premium features trial.

LiquidPlanner supports SAML 2.0 (Security Assertion Markup Language), which allows for the use of SSO, using enterprise identity providers such as Active Directory and LDAP. Enabling Single Sign-On via SAML 2.0 means that user authentication is handled entirely outside of LiquidPlanner.

This is what you need to have in place in order to configure SSO:

• Your SSO Identity Provider is SAML 2.0 based, set up and fully configured.
• You know your ‘SAML 2.0 URL’. Also known as the Remote Login URL for your SAML server/service and sometimes called SAML Single Sign-on URL.
• You know your Issuer URL.
• You have a SSL certificate.

LiquidPlanner supports Single Sign-On with these providers:

• Onelogin
• Okta

Learn how to setup SSO in your workspace in academy.

The post Release 29 | Single Sign-On appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

Single Sign-On

We now support Single Sign-On! Organizations on the Ultimate Plan can enable SSO under Administration in the left-side navigation. Read more here.

Sign In Page

NEW: We have a new sign-in page. It includes a link to release notes and supports Single Sign-On for Organizations enabling this feature.

Project View

NEW: Expand sub-folders in Project View by selecting “Expand top sub-folders” in the dropdown menu

• The expanded state opens the top subfolders to show tasks/subfolders within them. We only ever show 2 levels deep.
• The new expand top sub folder setting selection will stick through page refresh, new browser instance, logout/in.

NEW: Drag-and-drop tasks into a subfolder.

• When the subfolder is expanded, you can drop the task into a precise location.
• When the subfolder is closed, the task drops to the bottom of the subfolder.

Grid View

We made it easier to download location information from Grid View. In addition to a location column which includes the full breadcrumb (Package / Project / Sub-Folder / Task) you can now set individual columns for each plan item.

New columns for Grid View set to Projects:

• Package
• Project

New columns for Grid View set to Tasks:

• Package
• Project
• Sub-folder
• Task
• Review Timesheets

NEW: Include done assignments without time tracked in Review Timesheets. Click the button at the upper-right corner to show this work. When reviewing timesheets with “Review Week” enabled, work that was marked done in the selected timesheet period is shown, even if no time was tracked.

The post New Updates | Release 29 Summary appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

Here’s a small but mighty release that delivers a powerful boost for your planning and tracking.

Swap Assignments

Use Swap Assignments in the bulk editor to quickly change existing task assignments and finalize your project plan by reassigning work from placeholders to your actual team members.

NEW: Reassign existing assignments in Project and Assignment Grid Views. Select up to 50 active assignments and use Swap Assignments to make changes. On assignments where hours have already been logged, swapping will mark the existing assignment done and create a new assignment for the member taking over the work.

(A) The new Swap Assignments button in the bulk edit toolbar

(B) Change assignees in the Re-assign To column

Hours Editor

NEW: The Hours Editor is redesigned to simplify the time-tracking experience and make it easier to see remaining, logged, and total hours for a given assignment. Explore the 3 subviews in the new Hours Editor:

• Planning: Log progress or update the remaining estimate.
• Logged: See the Assignment’s time-tracking history by day, by Cost Code.
• Total Work: View the daily estimation history and total hours (logged + remaining hours) by person by day.

Task Edit Panel Assignments Table

NEW: A Logged column has been added to the Assignments Table so you can see hours logged by assignment. Clicking into the Logged column opens the Hours Editor so you can track time.

Access Control and Invitation

NEW: Organizations on the ULTIMATE Plan are able to set the access level when inviting someone to their workspace. Project Manager is the default access level.

Persistence

This change was made based on user feedback – thank you!

CHANGED: Column selections and column order in the Timesheet Export are persistent, and remain intact even if you refresh the browser, navigate away from the page, or logout.

Cost Codes

NEW: Two new settings ensure Cost Codes are used when logging progress. Org Admins and Workspace Managers can edit them in Workspace Settings under Administration in the left-side navigation.

Default Cost Code for New Assignments automatically adds the default Cost Code when new assignments are created. General Task Work is the default setting in a new workspace. It can be changed or set to None.

Cost Codes can be required when tracking time by setting the field, When Logging Time to Require a Cost Code. When this is enabled members will not be able to log progress without a Cost Code.

Ratesheets

NEW: Apply rates to a project using the rate sheet dropdown menu on the Project Edit Panel Planning tab. Rate Sheets are a Premium Feature on PROFESSIONAL and ULTIMATE Plans. Customize Rate Sheets under Administration in the left-side navigation.

Change History

CHANGED: On PAID plans, deleted items are now retained for 90 days. On free plans, deleted items remain available for 30 days.

The post New Updates | Release 28 Summary appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

Timesheets were redesigned in Release 27.

Logging progress keeps projects moving forward. Timesheet is an efficient way to view your assigned work and log progress quickly across multiple tasks to keep the schedule up to date. You’ll see your Timesheet under My Work in the left-side navigation. To see someone else’s, go to People in the left-side navigation and then select a Person or Resource to view their Timesheet.

New Layout: Assignment & Task display has been updated so that tasks appear only once and the assignments you’re expected to work on that week are listed directly under the Task name. With this layout, it’s possible to see the full scope of work for each week’s tasks at a glance. Use the toggle to the left of the task name to expand or collapse the assignment rows.

Highlighting: Today’s timesheet column is highlighted in orange for quick tracking. Clicking into a cell highlights the cell in orange and its row in blue so you can be sure you’re tracking time for the right day and assignment.

Pin Tasks: Pin tasks to your timesheet for easy tracking. This is particularly helpful for Tracking Only Assignments. Pinned tasks stay on the timesheet until they are unpinned. The icon for a pinned task is solid gray. Scan the pinned column on the far right to see which tasks are pinned. Click on the pin to release it from the timesheet if you don’t need it there anymore. Sorting the timesheet by Upcoming Tasks groups all the pinned items at the top.

Learn more in the Academy.

The post Release 27 | Timesheet Redesign appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

This release delivers additional functionality for our Slack Integration and a redesigned Timesheet so teams can communicate more effectively about the status and progress of their work.

Timesheet Redesign

Timesheets have a new look and some important updates that make time tracking easier. Read more here.

See Upcoming Tasks in Slack

New: Visit the LiquidPlanner Home tab in Slack to see what’s going on this week and next. Use the Show 30 dropdown to adjust how many tasks are shown. For those on the ULTIMATE plan, toggle to another workspace via the name dropdown on the left.

Learn about the Slack Integration in the Academy.

Pin Tasks to My Work views

New: Keep ongoing work top-of-mind with Pinned Tasks. Pinning a task applies it to your Workload, Timesheet and Board views under My Work. Pin or unpin tasks by clicking on the pin icon in any of those views or use the pin that’s in the Task Edit Panel header.

Duplicate Dependencies

New: Duplicating now includes dependencies for plan items and templates.

• Duplicating a Package, Project or Sub-Folder duplicates all the items in the container, including Predecessor and Successor dependencies linking items within the container.
• When creating a project from a Template, Predecessor and Successor dependencies on items within the template will carry over when the new project is created.
• Predecessor dependencies are carried over when duplicating a Task. Set up Successor dependencies on the duplicated item after it is created.

Learn about Duplicating in the Academy.

In App Learning

Changed: Academy outposts moved to the left side navigation. Expand the left-side navigation to see lesson suggestions and use the arrow buttons to rotate through. They can also be accessed from the User Menu in the upper right corner of your workspace.

Privacy, Security & GDPR Compliance

Changed: We take our customers’ privacy and security seriously. With our switch to becoming a 100% remote organization, and in compliance with GDPR-related updates, we made edits to the following pages on our website that underscore our commitment: Privacy Policy, Security Statement, and GDPR Commitment. If you have any questions, please contact support@liquidplanner.com.

The post New Updates | Release 27 Summary appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

An Improved Way for Teams to Work With Slack

LiquidPlanner’s integration for Slack helps teams do more than just chat online. With our Release 26 updates, LiquidPlanner’s portfolio management platform is combined with Slack’s award-winning communication tool so teams can easily stay up-to-date on project work within your existing Slack workspace.

Learn how you and your team can manage projects in a new way to better plan, predict and prioritize your projects like never before!

What does LiquidPlanner notify you about in Slack?

LiquidPlanner notifies you when your task assignment is:

• Added
• Deleted
• Reassigned to someone else
• Marked done (either directly or by Task Status change)
• Made active again (either directly or by Task Status change)

If you have active assignments on a task, you are notified when:

• New assignments are added
• Assignments are marked done
• The task is moved to a different location
• The ASAP Scheduling on the Task is changed
• Task status changes

How your organization set up LiquidPlanner’s Integration for Slack

To start receiving notifications:

1) An Org Admin enables the Slack Integration for your LiquidPlanner Organization.

2) Members connect their user account in LiquidPlanner to their Slack workspace.

New to LiquidPlanner? Start a 14-Day Trial today!

LiquidPlanner’s integration for Slack is available on all paid plans. Organization Administrators on the FREE plan can enable it by upgrading to a paid plan or by starting a Premium Features Trial.

Ready to set up your LiquidPlanner integration for Slack? Learn more in the Academy.

The post Release 26 | Integration for Slack appeared first on LiquidPlanner.